Top 5: Getting in Tournament mode

The NCAA Tournament (always capitalized) tipped off in earnest. You're been up nights trying to figure out which 10 seed might make it to the Sweet Sixteen (Michigan, maybe Minnesota with Toronto's Devoe Joseph), strip-mined The Wages of Wins for pearls of wisdom, maybe said to hell with it and picked teams based on who has a funnier nickname, although none have anything on the one matchup in the women's NCAAs between South Dakota State (the Jackrabbits) and Texas Christian (the Horned Frogs).

You're wrong if you think this is all about knowing which team doesn't have an adequate backup centre if their best big man gets in early foul trouble, although that might help you fill out your bracket. March Madness is not an event. It's an attitude.

1. Re-read portions of Will Blythe's To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry.
   
   Granted, Blythe probably went a little far trying to claim that there's no internecine hatred like Duke-Carolina internecine hatred. However, it's brilliant and it gets to the heart of why people follow sports, to rationalize irrational loathing.
   
   Duke has never done you any wrong, yet you hate them and hate yourself for picking them to reach the Elite Eight. You might not watch NCAA Division 1 hoops all season (especially since the 35-second shot clock makes for a slower-paced game to Canadian eyes which have got used to the 24-second shot clock in the CIS), but when you see Duke, you're seeing the whole bile-pushing line of succession, from J.J. Redick back to Wojo to Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner. Who's playing for them now doesn't seem to matter much.
   
   
2. Re-read Chuck Klosterman's essay "33" (anthologized in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs). It's about the 1980s Celtics-Lakers rivalry, but it gets to the core of basketball. Relating to the sport comes down to black-and-white philosophies. You need your absolutes (do you favour a team with great bigs, or one with savvy senior guards) if you're going to be able to fill out your bracket by noon ET tomorrow.
   

   QUESTION #8: Should capital punishment be legal?
   Laker People say no, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a human rights activist who would question the validity of any practice that essentially replicates the original crime. Celtic People say yes, because anybody who's looked into Larry Bird's eyes knows he's a killer.

   This might embarrass both the person it's about and the person who said it, but a friend said that he knew the Carleton had it in the bag at the CIS Final 8 when he saw that one of the more important Ravens had noticeably deep-set eyes. He went on to explain that men have deeper-set eyes than women due to the warrior culture, when people fought with swords. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, this would mean Carleton's path to this national title started back in 1066 on some battlefield in England.
   
   
3. Go on YouTube and watch as many One Shining Moments as you can. You will cry. It's OK to cry.
   
4. Watch Hoosiers. It's a CRTC and FCC mandate that some cable channel must being airing it late at night on the eve of the Thursday first-round games. It was Reagan-era schmaltz, but it was good schmaltz.
   
5. Stay up half the night preparing arguments for why the Canadian university champion should get a NCAA bid (or saying, hey, our tournament is good enough). More than one Canadian hoops devotee has said it would be great if the CIS champs could be given a spot in the NCAAs, not as one of the no-hope 16 seeds, but maybe as a 12 seed against a team such as Utah, seeded fifth in the Midwest Regional.
   
   Imagine the interest if some wild Canadian horde were allowed inside the velvet rope. Imagine the pressure on the U.S. coaches and players to maintain the NCAA's superiority.
   

Do all that, and you'll be ready.

(Classic To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever moment on the phone with my mom earlier this week: "Did you see the Jets beat out the Raiders?" she said, referring to two area Junior C hockey teams, the Amherstview Jets and Napanee Raiders. Neither of us have ever attended a game, so taking glee in the Raiders' dust-biting might seem like bad form.

However, it made sense. The Sagers are Ernestown people, not Napanee people, no matter what our mailing address says. As kids, we played our minor hockey and ball for Ernestown Township, since it was closer to house and most of all, not Napanee, which tended to take youth sports a little too seriously. All five of us attended Ernestown Secondary School and played various sports, although it was good that my brother got to play a little football for the Napanee Golden Hawks. The lines are clearly delineated.)

Capital City FC creeps closer to reality

From the start, it's been the bid that made no sense. Yet, Ottawa keeps on keepin' on in its bid to bring big time (by North American standards) soccer to the capital.

Today, MLS big cheese Don Garber made his feel good visit to the city. As expected he said lots of nice things about the bid (link soon), and made an appeal for the public to throw lots of coin at the bid.

It's odd, this Ottawa thing. Nothing suggests that it will work -- a fickle sports market in the heart of hockey land with a media culture indifferent to the game.
But yet...there might just be enough to make it work. That Toronto has taken to the league helps -- God knows Ottawa likes to feel ignored by T.O. and you just know that TFC would get more press. MLS is big enough that it will make Ottawa feel like it's playing with the big boys, but small enough to consider Ottawa (MLS in Ottawa = Columbus in NHL).

Speaking personally, I just don't know if it will work. Yet, I think it might. I'll let Ottawa readers tell me if I'm on crack or not. Am I? Ottawa can't win this race, can it? Soccer couldn't work in Ottawa, could it?

Related: Garber says nice things about Ottawa

CIS Corner: Raven about the Ugly American

Notes on our teams of interest from The 613...

Ravens: For reasons that remain unclear, the fine folks down in Kansas Jayhawks country still remain traumatized by Henk Doornekamp's (Aaron's proud pops) voice ringing in their ears -- three weeks after the fact.

It's unclear whether this is really even something to get offended by; besides, where to start? We do have someone who was, after all, a guest in a foreign country referring to 19,000-seat Scotiabank Place as a "gym." He describe the atmosphere as "quiet," which it wasn't -- maybe it was compared to a Kansas-Mizzou game at Allen Fieldhouse in February, but compared to, about 180 arenas in NCAA Division 1, it was plenty loud. There's a declaration that, "An obnoxious crowd at a Canadian college basketball game seems as hard to imagine as a martini stand at a NASCAR race" -- play to stereotypes, much? -- and last but not least, a claim that Carleton officials said Mr. Doornekamp "is always obnoxious at the games."

Gee, it would be nice to know how Carleton people actually phrased their explanation.

Henk Doornekamp is a highly involved fan, but he has life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- that's a good slogan, is any country using it? -- on his side.

That being said, it was just such a completely misleading expression of a great night in CIS. Someone in the Ottawa media should fire back at the punk, just to show Canadians aren't always so passive.

All that can be said here is that "obnoxious" is about the last adjective that should be applied to the elder Doornekamp. The Kingston bias is cheerfully acknowledged. Speaking as someone who's seen Carleton play in person a dozen times over the past two years, Mr. Doornekamp is supporting his son.

Having a media credential doesn't give anyone the right to judge him for that, not after the thousands of hours he's put into being there for all of his now adult children. It's a family matter so long as it doesn't detract from anyone else's good time (who knows, maybe it enhanced it). Besides, Mr. Doornekamp doesn't seem to get after players. He usually zeroes in on refs and opposing coaches, who are in those positions because they are mature adults who know it comes with the territory.

Kansas coach Bill Self, showing that the bigger they are, the nicer they are, even laughed it off. He said he appreciated that the heckling helped "create an environment honestly where guys felt like there was some pressure to perform."

Anyway, it is just mind-boggling why someone would take potshots at an opposing player's dad, three weeks after the game. This misportrayal also characterizes Henk Doornekamp as a dead ringer for the actor who plays Buddy Garrity on Friday Night Lights (right in photo, obviously).

That is so far off the mark. Remember, that's an expert opinion coming from someone who is a court-certified expert on the FNL franchise (it's bound to come into play in a really high-profile criminal trial at some point, because once it gets cancelled, many of its fans might go a little crazy).

Carleton, at least not in any official capacity, can't really respond.

They would make themselves look like the rubes. It does fairly demand that someone fire a broadside in return. You listening, you kids at the Charlatan? This is a more valuable lesson than anything you'll learn in the J-school.

One other Ravens note: The hockey team plays UNB in its exhibition opener tonight.

Gee-Gees: The game notes for Saturday's tilt vs. Waterloo list the following injuries for the Ottawa: Ivan Birungi (ankle), fellow receivers Ezra Millington (ankle) and Marc-Andre St-Hilaire (chest) and cornerback Ugo Levesque (knee).

That could make four receivers not dressing or limited on Saturday. Ron Kelly is a maybe, also with a gimpy ankle. That is not helping Ottawa find its form, especially in that passing game that only failed them in the opener and in the closer of the 2007 season. Th

Streaming Sports Network Canada will have the call of the women's hockey Gee-Gees exhibition game on Saturday.

Golden Gaels: Our king of Kings will be teeing up the Queen's-U of T football game later today on Offsides (4 p.m., cfrc.ca), with scarcely little help from a rather grumpy guest.

It is odd how Queen's is sort of following along the same path as it did in 2007. Just as they year, they had an easy win at home over a school from Waterloo, followed by a game at Toronto and then, cue the ominous Peter Bretter score,* a showdown at home against Western. In this case, Toronto has more fight in it than last season and the Western game isn't an elimination game.

The big theme for the Gaels seems to be one of maturity after having a little of too-much, too-soon syndrome in '07. There's optimism that based on the way they've played the second half of their past two games, they've conquered any self-doubts.

Not to look past U of T, but there's a good chance of having three 7-1 teams in the OUA (Queen's beats Western, but Ottawa beats Queen's and they all win out). That would mean having a crazy kooky points-for and against scenerio to determine who gets the byes in the semi-finals. It could happen.

(* It's not as gratuitous a Judd Apatow reference as you might think. A friend figures that Kristen Bell must have spent some time on the Queen's and/or Western campus as research for the titular rule in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

CIS Corner: Gaels DB has distinguished Pyears

It did not escape notice that a Queen's Golden Gaels footballer, defensive back Jimmy Allin, was named city athlete of the year for Belleville, the hometown of our own Duane Rollins, who of course is a Laurier Golden Hawks loyalist.

That's almost as good as breaking into the Quinte Mall in the middle of the night and raising the Tricolour flag so it can be seen by all the drivers passing between Toronto and Kingston. Oddly enough, no Belleville Bulls hockey player has ever received the award, but in 2000 it went to a Kingston Frontenac, Andrew Raycroft, whose whereabouts are presently unknown.

True, the only two-time winner of the award actually was a quarterback for Laurier, Ryan Pyear, but -- how soon they forget -- the local Intel identified him today as a former "McMaster University football star." (That would have been his brother, Kyle Pyear, who was good enough to keep Jesse Lumsden in a platoon role during his run with the Marauders and won the honour himself in 2002. There haven't been many 5-foot-10, 175-lb. guys who were more entertaining than Ryan was during his years at Laurier.)

Anyways, Allin's triumph almost makes up for that '03 semi-final. For the 900th time, "kick it over the bar."

Rapidz: Ironically, 'putz' also has a 'Z' on the end

Someone, please, enlighten us all on what was the point of the article the National Post ran today on the Ottawa Rapidz.

Let's presume this has nothing to do with the CanWest chain being preferential toward the Liberal Party and Rapidz co-owner Rick Anderson being an ex-Liberal who changed parties many years ago. It would be pretty low to crap on a fledgling baseball team and the people who are emotionally invested in it just to service a shallow political agenda.

There isn't the will or the malice to do a Fire Joe Morgan-style line-by-line dismantling of a column batted out by Don Martin. He either had some encouragement from higher-up or just settled on it himself. Let's just say that this hit-and-run hatchet job wasn't right and it wasn't fair.

"And when what looked to be an easy double play by the Rapidz became two runs scored for the visiting New Jersey Jackals after a wild throw from second base soared five rows behind first base, well, that could arguably be creatively marketed as the sort of ball game entertainment you'll never see in the big leagues."

It was the first flippin' game. Why not point out that Nick Trainor made a great throw from right field to cut down a run in Friday night's game, if you're just going to use one random example? Slagging a ball team and its players based on a couple misplays, yeah, that contributes a lot to the discussion.

Hey, on Sunday, Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox made a throwing error against the Oakland Athletics (or as The Post abbreviated it, "Oakland As" -- it's only had an apostrophe for about 100 years). What a loser! This guy's actually getting paid to play baseball? So what if he threw a no-hitter in his previous start? There have been seven errors committed in the majors today, and that's with a light schedule.

That's a pretty typical example from the article. Granted, this is coming from someone who gets defensive and protective when people who don't have a screw's clue about baseball write about baseball. It's an outrage (granted, only about 1/100th of an outrage as this) to see a paper with the Post's reach not bother to get multiple sources or double-check basic facts.

It would have been nice, for instance, if a journalist from a paper distributed across Canada had bothered quoting more than one person for his column, like say any of the 4,246 paying customers who turned out on Thursday for Opening Day, some of whom he could have found with just five minutes of Googling, maybe less. Contary to the article's claims, Vancouver is still in affiliated baseball. It's a farm club of the "Oakland As," as a matter of fact.

Some Can-Am League players do get signed by the majors. The league's leading slugger from last summer, Sandy Madera, is hitting .333 with a 1.002 on-base-plus-slugging (OPS) in the Boston Red Sox organization. Of course, the Red Sox also employ Jon Lester, and he made a throwing error on Sunday, so what do they know?

Of course, putting any of this in the article might have provided some context that didn't fit into the neat little package.

(Of course, no one really believes Don Martin is a putz, but Frank magazine readers should appreciate the pun. This is more about yours truly being defensive and sensitive when someone else gets the space to do a big column about baseball.)

Related:
Pro ball, but low ball (Don Martin, National Post)

Erin Mills is really, really mad and thinks it's just not fair.

If you have ever been curious as to why Canada struggles to produce elite soccer players, have a look at this letter.

It's got all the ingredients. A petty minor soccer system over zealously protecting its little fiefdom--player development be dammed, we've got an OSL u-18 title to chase--and an unorganized elite system that is scrambling to play catch-up and, in turn, putting undue pressure on the pyramid below.

(sigh)

Should the Toronto FC academy have had its stuff together earlier and signed these five kids prior to the eve of the season. Of course. However, the TFC academy is in start-up mode and some growing pains should be expected. It should also learn from this and there will be no excuses if the same things happen again moving forward.

The truly alarming thing here is the pathetic protectionism of the Erin Mills Soccer Club. Instead of patting its kids on the back and wishing them luck as they pursue a professional dream, Erin Mills is worried about how their loss will affect its Ontario Cup chances. Could you imagine a minor hockey program being compelled to write a nasty letter after it had lost a top player to the CHL?

There is a reason that this country's three professional soccer teams--TFC, the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps--are wrestling elite development away from the minor clubs. The pro teams need young Canadians to develop for their long-term success and the minor clubs are, well, more or less incompetent.

CIS CORNER: RAVENS HAVE THEIR LAYER CAKE; A RYE TOAST

Reconstructing the remnants of an ill-fated liveblog into the usual rigmarole about our teams of interest from The 613:

HOCKEY

• Gaels: Been waiting a long time to break out this Mallrats reference ...
  
  

  "Breakfast, schmeakfast ... look at the score, for Chrissakes. Ryerson 3, Toronto 2 in a shootout. Breakfasts come and go, Renee, but Queen's, the Tricolour, they win their division and get a first-round bye maybe once, twice, a lifetime."
  

  
  It would probably be bad form for Queen's to invite Ryerson goalie Pierre Beaulieu to their first home playoff game, but they should. The Rams goalie helped his team play spoiler, stopping 43-of-45 Toronto shots in a shootout win that delivered the division to coach Brett Gibson and the Gaels.
  
  CFRC Sports should have more on this down the line. It's probably kismet that U of T wasn't able to take advantage of the much-reviled shootout and get the win they needed to win the division.
• Gee-Gees: So it's Ottawa-Toronto and Ottawa-Montreal (Carleton vs. McGill) in the two first-round series. Yanick Charron had two assists and bagged the OT winner in Sunday's 4-3 winner that clinched home ice for the Gee-Gees. Ryne Gove, a rookie who didn't crack the lineup till the New Year, had a pair of goals in regulation.
• Ravens: Carleton's first goal in their 7-1 rout of Ottawa perfectly illustrated how coach Fred Parker layered his lineup in order to build a playoff team right off the hop.
  
  Carleton was down a goal five minutes into Saturday's do-or-die game when Brodie Beard made a tape-to-tape, breakaway pass ahead to speedy Francis Walker. Walker, who played pro in Austria last season, was stopped by the Gee-Gees' Riley Whitlock in close. Instead of sailing past the net out of control like a lot of less experienced guys might have, Walker backhanded the loose puck to Adam Marriner, who chipped it over the goalie.
  
  For those of you keeping score at home, that's a former Tier II player scoring with assists from an ex-OHLer (Beard) and a former pro (Walker). That perfectly describes how Parker, whose team will play McGill in a best-of-3 first-round series starting Wednesday in Montreal, put his team together. Carleton won 12 games in its first season, twice as many as the other first-year team, the UOIT Ridgebacks (although, granted, the western half of the OUA is generally a little stronger).
  
  Parker, the former Central Junior league coach,. rolled the dice on bringing in players such as Walker, who had four assists today, knowing he might only have them for a season or two. The next layer is ex-OHLers who are serious about treating the CIS as a next step (instead of a four-year country club, as sometimes happens), including Beard (three assists) and Brad Good on the blueline as well as captain Andrew Gibbons, who got the third goal late in the first period.
  
  Last, but not least, since CIS hockey is also a bit of a second-chance league, came the Tier II grads such as Marriner and goalie Doug Jewer, who stopped 19-of-20 shots on Saturday. Mike Testa, one of the holdovers from Carleton's club program from '06-07, also scored and made a behind-the-back feed to set up Jared Cipparone during a three-goal outburst in the second period that blew the game wide open.
  
  It's safe to say that Parker's provided a template for how to quickly make a new team competitive. UOIT decided to go with a coach, Marlin Muylaert, who's got a great track record in the university game, having won a national title at Guelph. Carleton decided to go with a coach with deep roots in the region and it's paid immediate dividends.

HOOPS:

• Gee-Gees: Ottawa split, beating RMC after a loss to Queen's.
  
  There was a point late in Queen's 64-48 win at Ottawa on Friday where the Gee-Gees' group on the floor was Bojan Dodik, Vlad Pislaru, Marvin Bazile, Stefan Lawrence and Aaron Rados -- four rookies and a sophomore. Ottawa played hard, but not having Josh Gibson-Bascombe was too much.
  
  One sequence that stuck out, from when the game was still in doubt: In the third quarter, down 45-33, Dax Dessureault (who was held to four points) gets free for a jump hook that deserved to go down. On this night, it rimmed out, and while Ottawa coach Dave DeAveiro was pleading for a foul call, Queen's quickly got downcourt and canned a three. Another empty possession, another three and suddenly it's an 18-point lead for the Gaels instead of 10.
• Gaels: Baris Ondul had a team-high 17 points in a 76-63 loss to Carleton on Saturday night. Mitch Leger, who had a double-double in the Ottawa win, along with Jon Ogden were impressive.
  
  You know something else about Queen's? Very deadline-friendly. Since they tend to emphasize quick ball movement and perimeter shooting, there aren't a lot of fouls. Friday's game was an 8 p.m. tip and it ended around 9:30.
• Ravens: That 113-27 score against RMC might raise eyebrows from folks who don't follow the league. Far be it to point out that the RMC basketball players, in a few years' time, will face stuff that's a lot more challenging emotionally than getting your butt beat in basketball. And for pity's sake, Carleton didn't even dress Jean-Emmanuel Jean-Marie, a starting forward.
  
  This doesn't seem like it was analogus to Lou Holtz when he was the coach at Notre Dame calling a fake punt in the last two minutes with a 30-point lead over Navy. So long as Carleton's players weren't doing anything they wouldn't do in the normal course of a game (crazy shots, alley-oop dunks), there's nothing they have to apologize for.

FOOTBALL (yes, in February)

• It's nice to know the London Free Press sports department is so well-staffed and has so much space that's it now conducting teach ethics and good newsroom practices to student sportswriters, even if they don't go to school in that city.
  
  Friend of the blog Andrew Bucholtz, a sports editor at the Queen's Journal, might have slipped up, along with his senior editors, with the handling of a sensitive story. Gaels football coach Pat Sheahan says his quotes in a story about possible steroid use in the CIS with regard to Western were taken out of context. The inclination here is to believe them both, which is actually possible.
  
  Guess what, though? It happens. People make mistakes in journalism every day. No one has ever died from it, except maybe from laughing. I've effed up. I probably will again. The same goes for the holier-than-thou types in London. Why, just last week the same columnist who's apparently decided to put Andrew in his place wrote a column about footy where he spelled Sven-Goran Eriksson's name "Ericksson."
  
  The Free Press should have seen it as a youthful indiscretion and been cool and detached enough to laugh it off and leave well enough alone. There was no need to order a Code Purple on Bucholtz just because it looked like a contrary word had been spoken against their beloved Western Mustangs in an out-of-town student paper.
  
  Fortunately, Andrew Bucholtz, Pat Sheahan and Western coach Greg Marshall each have a sense of humour. Now, can the Free Press get one?